2011-2013 JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) #23242025 “An Integrated Generative Biolinguistic Approach to the Design, Development and Evolution of the Human Language Faculty”Biolinguistics Project, Japan

　Biolinguistics is an academic endeavor which defines our faculty of language as a uniquely human biological trait and explores its properties in search of a deeper understanding of the human mind/brain and, ultimately, of human nature itself. This approach encourages us to posit the same research topics for language that biologists posit for any other biological trait: (i) What is the internal architecture of language and how does it work? (design), (ii) How does it emerge in the individual? (development), and (iii) How did it emerge in the species? (evolution).
　Our research project adopts generative biolinguistics (the minimalist program) as an essential theoretical framework for pursuing the three topics above in a systematic and integrated strategy. Generative biolinguistics constitutes one major milestone in the whole history of linguistics including (but not limited to) generative grammar. We are convinced that biolinguistics marks the beginning of a new linguistic and human science for the new era.
　This website serves as the home base for our academic activities and also as an open forum for every researcher interested in the biolinguistic enterprise. It is our sincere hope that our research project, together with this website, will make a profound contribution to the progress of biolinguistics and open up a new field of linguistic studies for the next generation.

Koji Fujita, Project Leader (Kyoto University)

Foreword